All the Dark Places
by Telemain's Daughter
Summary: Mulder and Scully are navigating the troubled waters of their relationship when a new case-and new companions-threaten to break their bond. Will a case that's a little too close to home actually bring them closer together-and can Scully solve crime with three dogs in tow? (set post-IWTB)


_A/N: I just watched the second movie. Soooo... Um. **whispers** that was a terrible plot. But it's always good to see the gang, and hey. You get a fic out of it. Call it a win. I thought it was interesting that the movie seemed to show their relationship at a very tenuous point, and while I interpreted it as, they're staying together for now at the end, the "for now" part was definitely there. And who doesn't like Scully and dogs? Thus, this fic._

 _Movie epilogue/tag, slight spoilers for the movie. Leave a review, let me know what you think. This is going to be multi-chap and we all know how I abandon those like peanut shells on a barroom floor, so any and all encouragement is welcome. All rights belong to the creators._

* * *

The operating theaters were empty. The locker rooms were dark. The cafeteria was deserted, and so Mulder hiked up four flights of stairs and down three hallways to the office of Dr. Dana Scully.

He sometimes wondered what she'd been like in medical school. The scene before him, framed in the open door, gave him a pretty good idea.

At some point in the night, she'd abandoned her desk chair and now sat cross-legged on the floor in wrinkled scrubs, books and notes and medical journals spread in a horseshoe in front of her. Her desk lamp was angled to illuminate her work, and the yellow light slipped between the strands of her disheveled braid and made it glow.

Mulder gave a double-tap on the door jamb to warn her. "I'm thinking of getting a dog," he said. "Company for the long nights."

Scully's head snapped up, one hand pressed to her heart. "Jesus, Mulder, you scared me. How long have you been standing there?"

"I think the real question, your honor, is how long have _you_ been _here_."

Scully checked her arm for a watch that wasn't there and gave a halfhearted shuffle through the papers. "I don't know, what time is it?"

"Two-thirty in the morning. The nuns are worried about you."

"Did they call you?" Scully asked absently, picking up a sheet of lab results she'd just dislodged.

Mulder laughed softly and stepped inside. "No," he said, crouching down in front of her. "The nuns do not have my number."

"Please don't make a dirty nun joke right now, Mulder, I-"

"Hey." He nudged her chin until she looked at him properly. "It's two-thirty in the morning, Scully. _I'm_ worried about you."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "It's this case, this patient..."

"Well, I knew it had to be something. Normally you love my dirty nun jokes." That earned him a tiny smile. He brushed his thumb against her chin and sat back against the wall. "How is he? The little boy."

"He's out of recovery. He's resting now. We won't know if the treatment was successful in any way for at least a few more days, after we run some tests."

"But you're optimistic?"

She put her face in her hands and pushed her fingers through her hair. "I don't know what I am."

"A miracle worker." She started to shake her head and he kept going. "A very tired miracle worker who wants to go home with her crazy partner." He stood up and held out a hand to her. "Before he wakes up the Humane Society and adopts fifteen dogs."

She pulled herself up. "What is it with you and dogs all of a sudden?"

"Just a new little obsession." He helped her into her coat and snapped off the lamp as she shuffled out the door.

"I like dogs," said Scully.

"Then it's settled. One to fifteen dogs in the morning." He put his arm around her as they walked and she leaned, exhausted, into his side.

"How did you get here, anyway?" she asked.

"Hitchhiked."

"You hitchhiked."

"I'm resourceful like that."

"Well, stranger," she drawled, fishing her keys out of her coat pocket, "can I give you a lift?"

* * *

Scully felt a weight lift from her chest the minute she stepped inside. The house was dim, light creeping around corners from the kitchen and Mulder's study. He was right beside her, hanging up their coats and turning on a lamp. He was warm and real and she was suddenly very glad to be home.

"Why, hello, Dr. Scully," Mulder murmured, wrapping an arm around her waist when she leaned up to kiss him. She hummed in reply and dug her fingers into his hair, pulling him closer. He slipped his hand under the edge of her scrub shirt, stroking a heated circle against her skin. She pushed him back against the front door and kissed him fiercely, until the urgency faded a bit and she nestled her face in his chest, breathing hard, her arms still locked around his neck.

"Go to bed." He kissed her hair and nudged her toward their room. "I'll be there in a minute."

She nodded. Mulder sloped off to his study and Scully performed a truncated version of her nightly routine. Hair, teeth, pajamas. She sat on the edge of the bed, knowing if she lay down alone she'd just fall asleep in two minutes, and she didn't want that tonight. She wanted something else.

Mulder stood with his back to her, scribbling a note on his desk. She walked up and ran a hand down his back, then rested against him, her arms around his waist.

"Hey," he said softly, patting her hand.

"You were taking too long."

"I know. Sorry. I'm coming."

"Well, you know," Scully began, turning him to face her, "we could always start in here..." She sat on the edge of his desk and drew him between her legs, enjoying his amused smile and the way he always closed his eyes before he kissed her, like he was making a wish.

Mulder laughed against her skin, and she smiled. "I can feel him watching us," Mulder said, kissing the corner of her mouth.

"Who? God?"

"No." His hands were on her bare shoulders, and the rough fabric of his bandage made her shiver. "Dog."

"Dog? What dog?"

He stilled. "Oops."

Scully pulled back and felt around for the desk lamp. "Mulder, what dog?"

"Technically, it's dog _s_ , plural, and, um..." He stepped out of her line of sight and tipped his head at the far corner of the room. "Those dogs."

Curled up on a pile of blankets were three dogs. A shepherd mix, some type of snow dog, and what looked like the head of a pit bull on the body of a collie. The pit-collie started panting at her.

"So, what, all that about adopting a dog was supposed to prepare me for what you'd already done?" Scully slipped off the desk and went over to gingerly pet the pit-collie. "Where did you even—oh."

"Special Agent Drummy called me."

"Oh, Special Agent Drummy has your number, then?"

Mulder ignored the dig and kept going. "They needed foster homes for the dogs from the compound until the trial. And they couldn't just let the ASPCA handle it."

"Because the dogs are evidence." The pit-collie licked her hand.

"I was going to call them witnesses. Maybe even plaintiffs in their own civil suit, after the federal trial."

"Do you sit at home and watch legal dramas all day?" Scully straightened up and her back cracked. "I'm going to bed."

She was halfway to the bedroom before she realized Mulder wasn't with her. She looped back and stuck her head in the door. "You coming?"

He looked up from a newspaper clipping."I thought I was in the dog house now. Literally."

"I like dogs," Scully repeated. Mulder laughed and came to the door. "We're going to have to talk about your news-breaking skills, but not now."

"What's now?" Mulder asked, taking her hand.

"Now is us," Scully said, not very clearly, but it was three in the morning and she couldn't care. "Just not on your desk."

"Too many witnesses?"

"Too many pushpins." Scully led him to their room and knocked him back onto the bed. "There's really a lot of pushpins in there, Mulder."

* * *

Three days later, Scully came home from the hospital at one o'clock in the afternoon. She had cried for almost the whole drive out from the city. After the news about Christian, there was no way she could stay at work for one more minute. The way his father had snapped at her, calling her all the terrible names she'd already called herself, made Christian's mother pulling her aside and thanking her almost worse. And then that damn priest, and his self-serving need to have a "conversation about faith," telling her about trust and belief and doing God's will, and-

The keys slipped out of her hand onto the mat and Scully realized how hard she was shaking. She took a deep breath, the chilly juniper-scented air burning through to her brain. She picked up the keys and carefully unlocked the door. Tea, she thought. Tea would help. And maybe a hug. Mulder would make a silly joke about the priest's ears and it wouldn't solve anything, but it would make her smile.

The pit-collie and the shepherd mix, whom they'd taken to calling John-Paul and George respectively, trotted out to the living room to greet her. She sat down on the rug to pet them, sinking her hands into John-Paul's neck ruff and letting George snuffle her ear.

"Where's Ringo?" she asked them. "Still hiding in my closet? Let's go find Mulder and then maybe we can all go for a walk, okay?"

At the mention of Mulder, George barked once and an insistent whine rose from the bedroom. Scully headed towards the sound and the other dogs followed. "Mulder," she called on her way past the study, "I'm home early." She'd thought he might have had another of his 'premonitions' of her arrival, since the outer gate was unlocked again.

Ringo cowered behind her pantsuits, shedding stiff white fur into her shoes. She patted his head, but since he wouldn't stop whining—a whine that became a yelp when she tried to move him—she decided it would be kinder to let him stay in the closet for now.

She detoured back to the study before making tea, just to make sure Mulder was alright. Mulder wasn't there. She stepped into the room and scanned the walls for anything handwritten, or a note left on the desk. Sometimes he walked to the convenience store a mile away for sunflower seeds, but there was no indication he'd gone, either in there or the kitchen. Scully started quietly panicking. Had the FBI recanted on their offer and arrested him? Had extremely tidy criminals broken in? Had he just—left, for good? She tried to convince herself the latter wasn't true; Mulder wouldn't have left without taking his books or his laptop, but the alternatives were no less appealing.

She checked her phone. No new messages.

Ringo's whines became absolutely despairing, and the other two dogs left to join him in a mournful closet chorus. Scully followed, scrolling through her phone to find Skinner's number. She didn't want to call him again unless it was urgent, but under the circumstances-

She ducked down and looked under the bed. Mulder's overnight bag was gone. She pressed her forehead to the bedspread in relief. There was a secret fear that lurked in her mind every time she was headed home, but this disproved it. People who killed themselves didn't pack overnight bags.

The dog were beside themselves now and she took the phone into the study so she could hear well enough to call Skinner. Standing over Mulder's desk, a tiny white and blue card she hadn't seen before caught her eye.

It was Special Agent Drummy's card. His phone number had been highlighted.

"I'm going to kill him," she muttered, stuffing the card into her pocket. "And then I'm going to raise him from the dead and kill him again. Come on dogs!" she called, and two sets of paws skittered across the bedroom hardwood. "We're going to Washington."

* * *

The dogs would not shut up. They barked along with the radio; they whined if it was silent. Ringo cried in the passenger foot well for the entire drive. She tried to leave them in the car in the underground parking garage and they sent up such a volley of reverberating barks, they set off a neighboring car alarm.

"Okay, fine," she told them as she let them out. "But you have to behave, understand me? Behave. Heel. Ringo, you can't hide under the car. Come on now." She sighed and dug through her briefcase, unearthing two sterile IV lines and a single knee-high stocking. She tied the lines to George and Ringo's collars and slipped the stocking around the ring in John-Paul's safety harness, and together they set off toward the elevator.

They checked the basement first, but Mulder's old office was just as deserted as it had been six years ago. Scully worked her way through seven floors, breezing past people who tried to tell her that non-service animals were not allowed in the Hoover building. They finally located Agent Drummy in an eighth floor conference room currently serving as an action center. She planted herself in front of him. "Let's talk in the hall, Agent Drummy."

He raised his eyebrows. "Dr. Scully, always a pleasure. I'm a little busy right now."

"I can yell at you just as easily in front of your colleagues. Your choice."

Drummy sighed and accepted a handful of files from an aide. "Let's go."

Scully whirled on him as soon as they were clear of the room. "Where is he?"

"Where is who?"

"Fox Mulder. Where is he?"

"I'd sure like to know that myself, Dr. Scully. In fact, I think one of my agents was just about to give you a call. I see now we can save ourselves the trouble."

"You never should have called _him_ in the first place. He's not some psychic plaything you people can just activate whenever you're stumped for the next clue!"

"Now, hold on a minute, just calm down-"

"No! I made myself perfectly clear—you are not to contact us again. You don't understand, this work is like a drug for him, a rabbit hole to disappear down. One day it's abductions in Idaho, and the next I'm doing emergency blood transfusions in the arctic circle. So perhaps you can understand why I'm not very _calm_ right now."

"No, Dr. Scully, clearly it's you who doesn't understand the situation."

"Try me. Or better yet, just tell me where you sent him and I'll track him down myself."

"I didn't send him anywhere!" Drummy shouted. "I never even called the man! Larken called him, and now they've both gone rogue!"

"What?"

"Oh, now do I have your attention?" Drummy waved the files for emphasis. "I am trying to run an investigation here, and I've just racked up two more missing persons."

"What's the case?" Scully grabbed one of the files and flipped it open. The top sheet was a missing persons report for a fifteen-year-old boy named William Bowman, last seen leaving for school yesterday morning in Friendship, Maine. The picture showed a slightly smiling young man with blond hair and brown eyes.

Scully tightened her grip on the dogs' leads. "Why is everyone named William," she murmured. "Presumably both Mulder and this Agent Larken are headed to Maine?"

"Last known location was just outside New York City, but that was three hours ago."

"Wonderful." She snapped the file shut and pushed past Agent Drummy.

"Wait, where are you going? You can't take those, you're not part of this investigation!"

"I am now," Scully said, walking away.

"And you can't bring dogs into the Hoover building!"

"Bite me," Scully growled, and punched the button for the elevator.

* * *

Mulder was ready to bite his pen in half. Mr. and Mrs. Bowman were steadfastly clinging to the belief that their son kept no secrets from them, and refused to entertain any possibility that disproved their theory. Mulder already knew a secret the Bowmans were unaware of—or in denial about—and knowing fifteen-year-olds, that secret was simply one of many. Any minute now, the police stationed outside would receive word that no Agent Mulder was attached to the case, and his chance to question these people would be gone for good.

The late hour was in his favor (he hoped). A massive snowstorm on the turnpike had slowed traffic on the way up, but he was here now and now was the only chance he would get.

"Please think, did William have any new friends in his life? New clothes or electronics you didn't buy for him?"

Mrs. Bowman was already shaking her head. Mr. Bowman frowned. "Your people have already been through our house, can't you answer your own questions?"

"We're just trying to establish..." Mulder trailed off as a commotion of raised voices grew outside. Hell, he didn't know what he was trying to establish here. That the Bowmans didn't kill their own child? _Do you have any freshly turned dirt in your backyard? Any new shovels in your life?_

And now the game was up.

One voice raised above many on the porch. "Young man, I just drove seven hours with three dogs in the car, do not fuck with me right now."

"Good heavens," said Mrs. Bowman. "Who is that."

Mulder locked down a smile. "The cavalry. Excuse me for a minute, would you?"

Scully stood on the top step, blazing with a cold fury indiscriminately directed. A small knot of police officers were backing away from her so fast they almost smacked into the storm door as Mulder came outside. Scully's gaze locked onto him and he crossed the porch in two strides to take her arm and guide her down the walk to the mailbox at the end of the drive.

"What the _hell_ , Mulder," Scully hissed at him.

Mulder tried to explain. "Larken called me and I couldn't say no, Scully. This case-"

Some of the stiffness leached out of her body. "This isn't about the investigation, Mulder. I can understand about that. This is about you not telling me a damn thing about where you were or what was going on."

Mulder went for the easy out. "I thought if I told you, you'd try and stop me."

She raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him. He looked down at the trampled snow melting against their shoes, and once he looked down it was too hard to look back up at her face when he spoke next.

"I really couldn't say no when she called for my help, Scully. And I knew—I thought if I did this, you wouldn't be there when I got back."

He was acutely aware of all the ambient noises around them, all the sounds of Scully not speaking. The police muttering on the porch. A car door slamming. Distant dogs whining and barking and howling.

And then Scully slipped her hand into his and squeezed.

"You shouldn't anticipate what I'm going to do or say, Mulder," she said quietly. "I might surprise you."

"You do surprise me, Scully," he said, finally meeting her gaze. "I didn't think you'd come after me."

"I'll always come after you, Mulder. No matter what happens."

"Thank you." He frowned. "So you're... okay with this?"

"No, I'm not." She looked past him and he started to say something else, but she cut him off. "Just keep your phone on, okay? The next time I have to save you from hatchet-wielding lunatics, I don't want to be too late."

Footsteps crunched in the snow behind them and Mulder turned. Celia Larken stood there, shivering and clutching a set of keys attached to a wooden paddle.

"The Friendship Festival is this weekend," she said. "I got the last available motel room." She held out the keys to Mulder and Scully intercepted them.

"Celia, this is my partner, Dr. Scully," Mulder introduced. "Scully, Celia Larken."

Scully offered a slight smile and a hello. Celia looked confused. "I thought you didn't actually work for the FBI anymore."

"We don't," said Scully, more than a little pointedly.

"We're still partners," Mulder said, hoping to any god out there he didn't have to define their relationship any further while hell froze over around them.

"Oh... oh! Sorry, okay, yeah." Celia cleared her throat and Scully narrowed her eyes, as if suddenly noticing how young Celia looked in her puffer coat. Any minute now, she'd figure it out-

"Are you going to finish the interview?" Celia asked, gesturing up at the house.

"They're not being very cooperative," Mulder said. "They seem more concerned about their reputation than their child."

"But he's their son," Scully protested, as ever aghast at the callousness of others towards children.

Celia cleared her throat. "Not just their son," she said. "She's also my sister."

Scully stared at Celia and then turned an inquiring look on Mulder. He checked with Celia, who nodded.

"I think we need to talk."


End file.
